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from a friend who knows Helen. She said to share it freely in an effort to inform. I posted it to the thread in Latest Breaking and now here with a big thanks to Helen for standing up. :toast:
Testimony of Helen K. Kolbe at Maryland State Board of Elections Hearing
May 19, 2004, 151 West St, Rm. 200, Annapolis, Maryland, 10:30 a.m.
My name is Helen K. Kolbe. I am a retired United Nations official. I have spoken at United Nations meetings on five continents most often in formal settings. Ross Goldstein informed me that this Hearing would be informal. I am prepared to proceed accordingly.
Firstly, I would like to say to Nikki Trella that I am happy to meet you and glad to get to know you. However and for the record, I want to make it known that I object to your serving as Hearing Officer. I object because I believe that you were responsible for preparing the elections training manual and for training local election directors. That training appears to have been inadequate and a contributory factor to the reason for this hearing. You signed the Friday, February 20, 2004 20-page Memorandum of four Last Minute Instructions for Election Directors that could not possibly have reached them before February 23 or 24, just four working days before the Primary Election. Yet all judges were expected to be up to speed on those Last Minute Instructions. The first three Last Minute Instructions had to do with problems with the Diebold AccuVote TS voting units. The fourth Last Minute Instruction instructed Election Judges not to issue a provisional ballot to a voter who chose not to vote on the AccuVote-TS voting unit. It is quite evident that not all judges were aware of that instruction nor apparently were they aware of Linda Lamone’s letter to Linda Schade, Co-Director of Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland, dated Thursday, February 27, 2004 (just two working days before the election), and copied to Local Boards of Election, informing Ms Schade that voters who requested an alternate to using the AccuVote-TS voting unit in the polling place could vote by absentee ballot.
I believe that a State Board of Elections Hearing on a question of disenfranchisement by fraud and deception should be heard before the entire State Board of Elections including the President, the members, the Administrator and the Deputy Administrator. I therefore reserve the right to request such a Hearing subsequent to today’s proceedings and to take any other relevant, appropriate and necessary action
I am still trying to get my Primary Election vote counted At the March 2, 2004 Election I went through all the sign-in procedures to vote, just like every other voter, giving me every reason to believe that I was officially accepted to vote that day and, when requested by me, given a paper ballot for my use without indication at all that it would not be accepted as simply an alternate method of voting. I was not told that my vote would not be counted. That is just plain wrong!!! By any logic, my vote should be accepted or quite simply it is fraud and a stain on our electoral procedures. I was given a ballot that was "not a choice!" The Howard County Board of Elections rejected not just my vote but the votes of 20 other registered voters. The letter informing me that my ballot was rejected arrived in the afternoon of March 16th. The deadline to appeal with the Circuit Court of Howard County was March 17, an impossibility in less than twenty-four hours. So I wrote to the State Board of Elections to appeal my disenfranchisement and to request an open Hearing on the record.
Pete Pichaske wrote an article about the discarded Howard County votes in the Howard County Times, April 22, 2004. Here is a quote from his article: "Election officials said they allowed people to use the paper ballots because they wanted to ensure that everyone who wanted to cast a ballot did so. However, state regulations barred them from counting those votes, the officials said." Guy Harriman, Howard County Board of Elections chairman, told Mr. Pichaske that "We wanted to make sure that nobody leaves a voting precinct without voting. But we could not count them. We had no choice." I was not informed that my vote would not be counted nor were others, according to my understanding. I did not vote with the intention of not voting In five decades of voting, I have never before been disenfranchised. Linda Schade of True Vote Maryland told Mr. Pichaske, "They didn’t have to do that. They didn’t have to disenfranchise people." Ann Balcerzak, an alternate to the Howard County Elections Board told Mr. Pichaske she lobbied unsuccessfully to have at least some of the votes counted. She said, "In Helen’s case, in particular, I thought there had been an expectation that the ballot would be counted. This was a real shakedown cruise for us. This is the type of thing the board will be looking at very closely. When you realize how close elections can be, you can’t have this happening."
Guy Harriman and other election officials told Mr. Pichaske the voters requesting paper ballots should have been told when they voted that their vote didn’t count. Evelyn Purcell, Acting Director, said "That MAY not have been made clear to people by the election judges. And maybe the people didn’t understand what they were told." I, personally, do not know one single registered voter in Howard County who wouldn’t understand the five words "Your vote won’t be counted." Had I been told "your vote won’t be counted," I would have used the touch screen machine......reluctantly.
The March 2 Primary Election raised troubling questions about voting privacy, the policies and procedures of the State Board of Elections, the training of local election officials, and about what may happen in the November election.
A Wisconsin official, a former Congressional staffer, asked me "What happened to voting privacy in Maryland? How did the Board know which ballot was yours?" That’s a question I would like to have an answer to. How did election officials know which ballot was mine and not Robert’s or Dan’s or Janice’s or Sara’s? (I find this quite curious too.)
I also want to know when and why the State Board adopted a policy to reject certain paper ballots without establishing a procedure to inform all voters of that policy before the election.
I also have questions about the training of our local judges all of whom are good people. Who prepared the instructions? Who trained the judges? When and how were they trained? On what date was the final revision made to the training manual and on what dates were the local officials instructed in the final revisions? Did the judges know there was a policy to not count certain provisional paper ballots? Did they know they could offer Absentee Ballots as alternatives to touch screen voting?
I would also like to have answers about inconsistencies at the polls. Barbara Zalesky requested a paper ballot at Howard Community College where she votes. She was told they didn’t have any provisional paper ballots. Linda Odum told the judges at Longfellow Elementary School, where she votes, that she "preferred" a paper ballot. She received a provisional paper ballot, recorded her vote on it, and did not receive a letter from the Howard County Election Board saying her ballot was rejected as 21 others did. Another voter reported being denied a paper ballot when he requested one.
I also have questions about why, in the wake of the Florida 2000 election disaster, the State of Maryland skipped right over the tested, proven, verifiable voting system we had with optical scanners and rushed to purchase 16,000 non-verifiable touch screen voting machines.
The Washington Spectator, April 15, 2004, had a lead article entitled, "Electronic Voting Machines May Cast More Doubts than Votes." It noted that "We are already getting results of these possibilities. Last year, in a local election in Boone County, IN, an electronic system recorded 144,000 votes in a jurisdiction with 19,000 registered voters." It went on to say, "For electronic voting machine accuracy the most immediate reform is insisting upon having a "paper trail printout...Without that printed record Citizen X has no reasonable assurance that all went as planned." To gain that assurance, "Representative Robert Wexler (D-FL) has filed a federal lawsuit requesting a court order to require the Florida counties that have no paper trail printouts to install the equipment by November...Common Cause believes that the ability to verify one’s vote and have a record of each vote as cast must be an integral part of voting equipment. It is important for the accuracy of vote counting and for Americans’ long-term trust in elections.... We believe it is critical at this point to provide a voter-verifiable paper audit trail as one of the essential requirements of voting systems." In an May 18 email message, Linda Schade noted that "disabled-rights groups have been some of the strongest supporters of electronic voting, but blind voters in Santa Clara County (CA) said the machines performed poorly and were anything but user-friendly in the March election." The Washington Spectator also quoted from a New York Times editorial of January 18, 2004 which said, "The morning after the 2000 election Americans woke up to a disturbing realization: our electoral system was too flawed to say with certainty who had won. Three years later things may actually be worse. If this year’s presidential election is at all close, there is every reason to believe that there will be another national trauma over who the rightful winner is, this time compounded by troubling new questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines. This is no way to run a democracy."
In a letter to the editor of Newsweek, April 26, 2004, I wrote about my disenfranchisement in the Maryland Primary Election. I said "our voting system should inspire trust, not cynicism." I also quoted Joseph Stalin who said, "Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Based on the 2000 Florida election, as well as doubts being raised from coast to coast about electronic voting machines, and my own experience in the Primary Election, I am indeed worried about November. I remind you that the State Board of Elections establishes election policies and procedures and certifies our votes. That is awesome responsibility and awesome power as was demonstrated in Florida in 2000. I should think that every Maryland voter will be paying close attention to voting procedures and vote counting in Maryland in November. I do not wish to be disenfranchised ever again. That is why I requested this Hearing and why I hope that the Hearing will add impetus to the ongoing efforts to ensure that every election in Maryland, beginning in November 2004, will be fair to all voters, accurate and verifiable. These are the four outcomes I request and expect the Board to act upon:
1. Attach a verbatim record of this Hearing to the March 2, 2004 Maryland Primary Election Vote Certification.
2. Amend the 2004 Primary Vote Certification by counting and including the votes of all registered Maryland voters who chose to record their votes on a paper ballot as an alternative to touch screen voting machines.
3. Adopt and promulgate a policy to provide and count Provisional Paper Ballots (of registered voters who request them) in the November 2004 General Election.
4. Act immediately to work with the General Assembly and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) provisions to legislate a paper trail for voting machines that will ensure verifiable voting in Maryland by November 2004.
In summary, this Hearing is about counting votes and who decides whose votes count. In regard to counting votes, I quote from a letter dated March 29, 2004 to Gilles W. Burger, President, Maryland State Board of Elections:
"This letter is a dissent by alternate Howard County Board of Elections member, Ann Balcerzak, from twenty-two (22) vote determinations of the Board and the Board’s subsequent verification of the vote count. I believe the Board proceedings were not in compliance with the applicable law, regulations or were otherwise illegal or irregular. The reasons for my dissents are set forth below.
Use of Paper Ballots as alternative to Touch-Screen Voting Machine. On March 8, 2004 and March 12, 2004, the Board voted to reject the Provisional Ballots of twenty-one (21) Howard County voters. The basis for the Board’s rejection of these ballots is solely that these voters either refused to vote on the TS voting or asked to vote with a paper ballot rather than use the TS voting machine. The Howard County Board was following the directives of the State Administrator to the State Board of Elections who had issued a directive to all local Boards of Election, stating that election judges were not authorized to issue a Provisional Ballot to a voter who did not want to vote on the Accu Vote-TS units. Despite this directive, Provisional Ballots were issued to these voters. I believe that issuing Provisional Ballots under these circumstances was unfair and deceptive to voters who believed that having been provided a ballot that ballot would be counted. One voter told me that had she been informed that her Provisional Ballot had no chance of being counted, she reluctantly would have used the TS unit, but this was not the case. This same voter states that she was not offered the use of an Absentee Ballot as provided by the directive of February 27, 2004. Having followed the sign-in procedures, she sees the issuance of a Provisional Ballot under these circumstances as a means to fraudulently disenfranchise voters. I believe that these twenty-one (21) voters had a reasonable expectation that their vote would be counted and now should be accepted and counted
Article I of the Maryland Constitution states:
All elections shall be by ballot. Every citizen of the United States, of the age of 18 years or upwards, who is a resident of the State as of the time for the closing of registration next preceding the election, shall be entitled to vote in the ward or election district in which he resides at all elections to be held in...this State.
USCA Article 42 Sec.1971 (a) (2) (B) states:
No person acting under color of law shall...
(B) Deny the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such an error or omission is not material in determining whether such an individual is qualified under State law to vote in such an election...
These twenty-one (21) voters are registered voters, voting in their correct precincts. Additionally, in light of the negative press the new voting machines received, the apprehension of the voters over the use of the new equipment, the voters’ fear of not having a paper ballot trail and the fact that Election Judges were not notifying these voters that their Provisional Ballot votes would not be counted, I believe the voters’ ballots should have been accepted and counted.
For the afore stated reasons and pursuant to Maryland Code Election Law Ann .Sec. 11-308 © I, therefore, dissent from a verification of the Howard County Board of Elections results."
The Attorney General sent a letter to Elizabeth Bobo, State Delegate, Howard County, in response to her inquiry about the disenfranchisement, saying that Helen Kolbe has raised a legitimate question because she was given a provisional ballot contrary to board policy.
As Joseph Stalin said, "Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Voting is the last bastion of our democracy. If we can not vote with confidence that our votes will be counted, where is our democracy? The voters of Maryland have a right to expect our State Board of Elections and our legislature to guarantee fair, accurate and verifiable voting. Someone has said, "Ignore your rights and they’ll go away." I choose not to ignore my rights and the rights of my fellow voters. I expect, yes, demand fair, accurate and verifiable voting in November 2004 and in every election thereafter. It is up to the State Board of Elections and the General Assembly to make that happen. I know you can do it, I hope you will do it. I am counting on you to do it. We can’t afford to get this wrong.
I want to call as witnesses the following people in this order:
Thomas Butler, Robert Marshall, Dale Jones, Regina Holt, Daniel Mark, Janice Manyak, Sara Rubloff, Dawn Popp, disenfranchised registered Maryland voters from Howard County. (Sara Rubloff’s and Dawn Popp's statements will be read by Janice Manyak)
i will also ask Robert Ferraro of TrueVoteMD and Campaign for Verifiable Voting to speak
I will also ask the following officials, supporters of verifiable voting, to speak:
Ann Balcerzak, Esq., alternate Howard County Board of Elections member
The Honorable Elizabeth Bobo, State Delegate from Howard County
Attachments:
1. Howard County Times, April 22, 2004, pp. 1, 7.
2. Newsweek, April 26, 2004, p. 14
3. Letter from Howard County Board of Elections, March 12, 2004, received March 16, 2004
4. Letter from Helen K. Kolbe to Ann Balcerzak, March 22, 2004
5. Letter from Ann Balcerzak to Helen K. Kolbe, April 2, 2004
6. Letter from Ann Balcerzak to Gilles W. Burger, March 29, 2004
7. Email from Helen K. Kolbe to Howard County Times, April 16, 2004
8. The Washington Spectator, April 15, 2004, pp. 1-3
9. Washington Post, "Paper Receipts Opposed for Voting Machines," by Dan Keating, Page A08.
10. The New York Times, "Florida as the Next Florida, March 14, 2004, editorial.
11. Email, MoveOn.Org,, May 2, 2004, "Protect our Votes - Insist on verified ballots," 2 pages.
12. Email, Daniel Mark, May 14, 2004, "Election Process Concern and Complaint," 4 pages
13. Emailed statement of Sara Rubloff
14. Mercury News (CA), 2004, Blind Voters Rip E-machines: they say defects thwart goal of enfranchising sight-impaired, by Elise Ackerman.
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